Improving Situational Awareness During Early Earthquake Response Using
Existing Seismic Risk Models to Rapidly Estimate Damage
Abstract
In the first several hours following an earthquake, municipalities are
often forced to rely upon reports from first responders, reconnaissance
along disrupted roadways by emergency personnel, or wait for aerial
surveillance and remote sensing. The latter is expected to take at least
12 hours, a crucial period following a major earthquake in which
situational awareness can be greatly improved using existing seismic
risk modelling tools. This work presents a new initiative to develop a
rapid disaster modelling protocol for earthquakes in British Columbia
(BC). We explore best practices and the feasibility of using immediately
available seismic data in the existing OpenQuake Canada framework to
model the impacts to people, the built environment, and the economy from
an earthquake in near real-time. The current prototype integrates
observed ground motion data from regional strong motion seismometers,
like the BC Smart Infrastructure Monitoring System, with physical
exposure data from Natural Resources Canada’s Human Settlement Layer to
report on key metrics for early response: collapsed buildings,
entrapment injuries, hospital demand surge, roadway debris which may
block response, and immediate mass care needs like shelter requirements.
These indicators will be ported to the British Columbia Common Operating
Picture Portal, the online situational awareness and mapping platform
for authoritative, collaborative and coordinated distribution of
emergency management information in the province. These outputs could be
made available within tens of minutes of the earthquake occurring,
potentially affording emergency managers the opportunity to best direct
resources to save lives and reduce suffering.